How Trump Dominated His Own Party on a New G.O.P. Platform
The New York Times
Donald Trump and his team displayed a ruthless efficiency in the process of making a platform, confiscating delegates’ cellphones and stifling dissent and even debate.
Donald J. Trump long ago decided he wanted a very different Republican Party platform in 2024. The delegates who arrived in Milwaukee early last week before the Republican National Convention, with grand plans of drafting a sweeping document of party principles, quickly found out just how determined he was.
Within minutes of their arrival, their cellphones were confiscated and placed in magnetically sealed pouches. There would be no leaks of information. It was only then that the delegates received a copy of the platform language the Trump team had meticulously prepared, which slashed the platform size by nearly three-quarters.
“This is something that ultimately you’ll pass,” Mr. Trump told the delegates by phone and made audible to the room, according to a person who was there and who was not authorized to speak publicly. “You’ll pass it quickly.”
He was right. Within hours, the platform committee had endorsed a document that Mr. Trump had personally dictated parts of, according to two people with direct knowledge of the events, and it all happened before the delegates got their phones back.
The committee passed the platform by a vote of 84 to 18.
The new platform softened language on abortion, excised old language referring obliquely to gay conversion therapy and culled a section about reducing a national debt that Mr. Trump had increased by nearly $8 trillion during his term in office. But the most revealing part was not any particular provision or plank.
